Climbing the Mountain

The Scientific Biography of Julian Schwinger

Jagdish Mehra and Kimball A. Milton

Biography on one of the most important and influential scientists of the 20th century

Provides unique and illuminating insight into Schwinger's life and work

Reveals much of the work underlying modern physics

Written by the acclaimed biographer of Richard Feynman

Climbing the Mountain

The Scientific Biography of Julian Schwinger

Jagdish Mehra and Kimball A. Milton

Table of Contents

Preface1. A New York City Childhood2. Julian Schwinger at Columbia University3. Schwinger Goes to Berkeley4. During the Second World War5. Winding up at the Radiation Lab, Going to Harvard, and Marriage6. The Development of Quantum Electrodynamics Until 1947: The Historical Background of Julian Schwinger's Work on QED7. Quantum Electrodynamics and Julian Schwinger's Path to Fame8. Schwinger, Tomonaga, Feymann, and Dyson: The Triumph of Renormalization9. Green's Functions and the Dynamical Action Principle10. The World According to Stern and Gerlach11. Custodian of Quantum Field Theory12. Electroweak Unification and Foreshadowing of the Standard Model13. The Nobel Prize and the Last Years at Harvard14. Move to UCLA and Continuing Concerns15. Taking the Road Less Travelled By16. Diversions of a Gentle GeniusAppendix A: Julian Schwinger - List of Publications Appendix B: Ph.D. Students of Julian Schwinger Index

Climbing the Mountain

The Scientific Biography of Julian Schwinger

Jagdish Mehra and Kimball A. Milton

Author Information

Jagdish Mehra has been University Distinguished Professor of Sciences and Humanities at the University of Houston, Texas for many years and also served as UNESCO-Sir Julian Huxley Distinguished Professor of Physics and The History of Science at Trieste and Paris. He has published extensively on the historical and conceptual development of modern physics and is the acclaimed biographer of 'The Beat of a Different Drum: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman'. From Spring 1959 until Schwinger's death, Mehra remained his close friend. Kimball A. Milton is Professor of Physics at the University of Oklahoma, where he leads the theoretical high-energy physics group. He has numerous publications in the field of quantum field theory. He was a student of Julian Schwinger at Harvard and was his postdoctorate associate at UCLA for nearly a decade.